From the early origins of popular sovereignty to today's struggles over equality, this course investigates constitutional thought and activity in America. We will examine constitutional amendments, Supreme Court cases, and political battles over citizenship and voting rights that have affected how "the people" are constituted. Beginning with the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention and ratification, and continuing through the period of slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, we explore the interactions between social movements and legal change. Reaching the twentieth century, we turn to upheavals around territorial expansion, executive power, the New Deal, American Indian status, African-American civil rights, wartime civil liberties, women's rights, LGBT Rights, and immigrants’ rights. The course puts a particular emphasis on students’ own interpretation of primary sources, from testimony before the 1871 Congressional hearings on the Ku Klux Klan, to contests reaching the federal courts in the present moment.

Course Requirements:

Two examinations: a midterm and a final. These will include both an "objective" component (typically of the "identify and give the significance" style) and an essay (or two for the final). A five page paper based on assigned materials is also required, and will be due about eight to ten weeks into the course.

Syllabi are available to current LSA students. IMPORTANT: These syllabi are provided to give students a general idea about the courses, as offered by LSA departments and programs in prior academic terms. The syllabi do not necessarily reflect the assignments, sequence of course materials, and/or course expectations that the faculty and departments/programs have for these same courses in the current and/or future terms.